Retail Employees Superannuation Trust (REST) has once again emerged as one of the best performers in Super Review’s Top 300 in 2001-02, but its CEO Neil Cochrane is far from sanguine about how his fund will end the current financial year.
While he believes the fund’s settings will see it once again finish close to the top of the table, he acknowledges that the volatility being exhibited by both Australian and foreign equities makes it hard to come up with any clear-cut predictions.
However, Cochrane says: “From what I understand to be the position of other funds, I think we will still be able to finish in the first quartile.”
Looking back at the fund’s performance through 2001-02, he makes clear that there were no secrets involved in its success – simply appropriate allocations centering on a higher exposure to property.
REST rewarded members with a 2.13 per cent earnings rate to finish second behind Local Super (SA-NT) in the Top 5 performing Growth Options and with a 3.45 per cent earnings rate, to finish second in the top five performing balanced options.
“We saw property as providing a good yield,” he says, highlighting REST’s investment in 140 William Street, Sydney, which has proven to be an extremely well-located and well let building.
Cochrane says REST’s performance has also been influenced by the fact that its exposure to international equities was low compared to other super funds and that a manager within the asset class, Holowesko, returned +3.8 per cent compared to the benchmark of -23 per cent.
“Our portfolio managers did very well in terms of having the right asset allocation and the right settings,” he says.
Also, around 50 per cent of REST’s currency holdings had been actively hedged, says Cochrane.
